Sarasota artist designs Navy SEAL statue

The work turns into a memorial for Chris Kyle, a retired SEAL who was murdered at a Texas firing range by a troubled fellow veteran.

By BILLY COX

There is something almost spooky about Greg Marra's connections to history, particularly military history.

At 38, the classically trained sculptor has never worn a uniform, nor does the New Jersey native come from a military family. Yet, as Marra strolls old battlefields, particularly those from the American Revolution, he says, "It's like I have the ability to feel the emotions or energy around the area."

Well into this journey of revisiting military ghosts, Marra — who teaches art at Ringling College of Art and Design — encountered a surprise from his family tree that reinforced his career arc a couple of years ago. He discovered five knights in his ancestry, the earliest a likely Crusader born in Yorkshire, England, in 1140. "He died in Palestine in 1184," Marra says.

And so it was that, on Feb. 4, deep into his latest project — a generic elite-warrior statue for the Navy SEAL Foundation — Marra got a phone call that may well propel his skills of craft and intuition onto the national stage.

Chris Kyle, the retired SEAL whose exploits as the deadliest marksman in U.S. history are detailed in his autobiographical "American Sniper," was murdered at a Texas firing range by a troubled fellow veteran just two days earlier. Marra's new friend and promoter, Gene Sweeney of Bradenton, had a request: "You've got to turn the statue into Chris Kyle."

Marra converted his sculpture into a spot-on likeness of Kyle within a matter of days at his Sarasota warehouse studio, with the intent of donating it to Kyle's family in Midlothian, Texas.

Things have been a little crazy ever since.

Texas media has been buzzing over the anticipated arrival of Marra's statue in Arlington, where the clay version is set for a private screening at Schaefer Art Bronze Casting on Friday. Public viewings are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. A fundraising campaign is under way to finance a bronze casting — an estimated $85,000 to complete — along with a pedestal.

"This is a big deal to us here in Texas," says Michael Smith, an Army veteran who services home loans at a Fort Worth bank and is coordinating publicity efforts. "This is a gift to the family in perpetuity, coming from the heart of a man in Florida who wants to memorialize Chris without making a dime of money on it."

Smith says the dispensation of the statue — which left Sarasota on Monday in a truck escorted by the Patriot Guard motorcycle club — will be entirely up to the Kyle family.

A Sense of Patriotism

At a sinewy 6-foot-3, Marra's statue is a full-scale replica of the man officially credited with killing 160 insurgents during four tours of Iraq.

Complete with sunglasses, trimmed beard and battered cap, the sculpture is loaded for bear with three weapons. The boots are planted with full authority upon broken stones resembling the surface of Mars.

"Take all the guns away and he looks like a big high school football player," Marra says. "Give him a shield and a spear and he's a Spartan from '300.' The secret to a masterpiece is to make something that's timeless, and to me, this is reminiscent of a lot of Greek statuary."

Owner of a master's degree from the New York Academy of Figurative Art, Marra would spend much of the decade after 9/11 shuttling back and forth to Europe, where he studied the Renaissance masters.

He sculpted massive lion heads for a presentation of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" opera in Vienna. He worked construction in Zohor, Slovakia, where he met his wife. It was also where Marra located and tidied up a neglected monument at a bomber crash site dedicated to fallen U.S. airmen from the Second World War.

Marra returned from Europe with a heightened sense of patriotism, due at least in part to hearing constant criticism of America's invasion of Iraq. He would open a studio in Bucks County, Pa., where his American Patriots in Art projects would begin to germinate.

From Continental militia leader John Glover to Delaware Indian chief White Eyes, Marra dug deep into the archives to tease long-lost characters into three-dimensional form. His masterpiece, still on the drawing board, is a full-scale bronze recreation of Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware River." The estimated price tag for that one, which Marra would like to install at Washington Crossing Historical Park, is $3 million.

If someone offered him a blank check, Marra would produce 250 life-sized bronze Revolutionary War soldiers and have them converging, from points afar, upon the banks of the Delaware to join George Washington for his historic rout of the Hessians in 1776.

"In 2026, it's the 250th anniversary of the crossing," Marra says. "People may say oh, that's too expensive, but I say, well, if the emperor of China can have a thousand terra cotta soldiers and nobody even knows his name, don't you think George Washington deserves 250?"

'America's Michelangelo'

Prior to Marra's accepting a Ringling teaching position in Sarasota last year, well-wishers gathered at Moland House (where the Marquis de Lafayette joined the American Revolution) for an emotional farewell.

They included highly decorated Vietnam vet David Christian, as well as retired Army Col. Larry Rubini.

Rubini, a trustee with the Washington Crossing Foundation, compared Marra's work to the National Mall's iconic monuments, and saluted his ability to "bring back to life those who went before us."

Shortly after arriving in Sarasota last summer, Marra paid a visit to the Sarasota County Veterans Commission. He took along a bust of George Washington and expressed an interest in collaborative efforts. Favorably impressed was board member Gene Sweeney, who spearheaded the drive to establish the 9/11 Fallen Heroes memorial last year at Patriots Park in Venice. Sweeney calls Marra "America's Michelangelo" and hopes to secure funding for future patriotic projects.

"Gregory needs to keep his hands in the clay," Sweeney says. "My job is to be his press secretary, so to speak."

Among other things, Marra says he'd like to build a World War I monument, and a tribute to Native Americans ("A large percentage of Native Americans are Medal of Honor winners," he says). But Marra also thinks Sarasota should celebrate its own lore. He tells a story about the namesake of the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter.

Legend has it that as Hernando de Soto explored Southwest Florida in 1539, his daughter Sara fell in love with a Calusa chief named Chichi Okobee. In nursing the gravely ill Okobee back to health, Sara contracted the affliction and died. Okobee, distraught, ordered 100 warriors to place her body in the bay and then destroy their own canoes so that all would drown and protect her in the afterlife.

Today, the wind-tossed whitecaps are said to be the feathered headdresses of Sara de Soto's eternal sentinels.

"I like to try to preserve things, and if this piece of history was important enough to have fairs and parades pageants in the '20s and '30s — as they did — I wonder where that is today," says Marra. "What about having a Sara de Soto Crossing?

"So it's not just about soldiers for me. But I feel so passionate about them because their sacrifice is what allows me to sit here and sculpt."